


Tattoos

by blackpercy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Black-Dominican Percy Jackson, Black-Nigerian Rachel Dare, F/M, Tattoo Artist Rachel Dare, and rachel isnt the oracle, anyways school has been kicking my butt, but here’s a fic😚😚, she’s a 19 yo tattoo/graffiti artist/professional menace to society, sort of canon compliant, the only thing that changes is that percy and annabeth break up after hoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29052036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackpercy/pseuds/blackpercy
Summary: Percy’s never thought of getting a tattoo before; the one branded on his forearm is enough. He had never considered it until he woke up from a terrible nightmare and wandered the streets, happening upon a small tattoo parlor and a girl with copper red braids and a sunshine smile.
Relationships: Rachel Elizabeth Dare & Percy Jackson, Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Percy Jackson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Tattoos

Percy Jackson’s first tattoo was an impulsive mistake.

Waking up in the middle of the night, heart racing, scattered his thoughts with the heat circulating through the room. Sweat dripped down his face as his eyes focused on reality instead of the horrific scene in his mind. 

_ The walls aren’t bleeding _ .  _ The floor isn’t crumbling. The gods haven’t forsaken me _ .

_ Haven’t they? _ A voice in his head supplied.  _ Isn’t that why you’re scared now? _

The first night in his apartment and he couldn’t sleep. Percy almost laughed as he reached for the sweatshirt on his desk and pulled it on. Plus sweats, because he wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. 

Nineteen might be far too young to live on his own, but the other alternative was waking up his mom, Paul, and his toddler sister with his blood-curdling screams every night. So he left. College was okay, the campus was beautiful. The best part was that he couldn’t see the top of the Empire State Building from his window. 

Percy grabbed his keys and, with every step, the panic seemed to settle into the background. It shrunk back into the corners and crept back in the crevices of his sanity. It always did, it had nowhere else to go.

He found himself leaving his apartment complex and walking on the sidewalk. He didn’t even know where he was going, just anywhere but the stifling apartment and its bleeding walls.

The cold winter air was sharp, sharp as a knife. Percy wanted to grab it and cut under the skin on his face. He wanted to pry away each layer of fear and fake-bravado to find  _ something  _ stable underneath. 

The middle of the night didn’t stop the people on the streets. If Percy was any normal person, he might have gotten mugged by now. One look from him, though, sent anyone looking for trouble scattering.

His feet carried him to a tiny tattoo parlour jammed in the middle of a Laundromat and a Thai restaurant. Both were closed. The lights of the tattoo parlour were yellowed and on. Percy could make out the sign on the window that said OPEN in red, angry letters. 

“What am I doing?” Percy mumbled to himself. The wind bit his face again, like another reprimand sent from the gods. He had never been a tattoo guy, but he remembered that some Aphrodite kids could create animated, bright designs and could leap off your skin. Whatever post-nightmare haze he was stuck in was looking for something new. 

What could be newer than a needle cutting into his skin recreationally? (Because stab wounds didn’t count.)

He stared at the parlour for a good ten minutes. He didn’t even know what he wanted to get, and where. Maybe his forearm? Bicep?

Before he could second-guess himself any more, Percy forced himself to walk to the place. Upon closer inspection, a dark-grey sign said “Effervescent Tattoos”

Whoever chose that name  _ definitely  _ didn’t have dyslexia.

He grabbed the metal handle on the door. Cold, so he gripped it harder. He noted the pull sign and swung it open, surprised to hear the delightful jingle of a bell. Heat, far too much considering he could only see one person, blasted in his face. 

The person seemed to be around his age.She had warm brown skin dotted with freckles. Her eyes, framed by long lashes, focused on Percy instantly. Copper box braids framed a pretty face, no makeup. Smudges of blue and green stained her comfortable clothes. Her form was lithe as she jumped off the counter and crossed her arms.

“You  _ actually  _ want a tattoo?” She sounded excited and fascinated, the way a child would marvel at a visually stunning discovery. Percy felt like a science project with the way she was staring at him intently.

Percy blinked, taken aback by the stun in her voice. That had...not been what he expected.

“Um,” he recovered from his shock to answer. “Wait, aren’t you guys open?”

She nodded. “Duh. I take the night hours because I don’t really sleep and it’s fucking three AM and...well,  _ nobody  _ comes in at three AM and I was about to close shop and-”

Percy let her keep talking. The sheer speed at which she spoke left his head spinning. Finally, she seemed sober enough to remember workplace professionalism and she pulled out a thick binder.

“My name is Rachel, by the way.” She flipped to a blank page in the binder and stood by Percy for him to see. “You need to fill these out, proof of age and all that. You’re, what, twenty?”

“Nineteen.”

“Perfect! So am I.”

Percy filled out the papers. He placed his address and phone number in the neat little lines where he was supposed to. It took less than five minutes, then Rachel snapped the binder to a close and turned to face him.

“What’s your design?” She asked him simply. 

Percy could feel the room growing hotter at the question. How was he supposed to explain to her that he came here out of total impulse and had not at  _ all  _ prepared to get a tattoo when he woke up that morning?

Rachel seemed to get it, because she laughed. 

“You’re one of  _ those  _ people,” she chuckled. Before he could defend himself, Rachel gestured for him to follow her into the backroom. “You’re probably gonna say ‘ _ you choose _ ’ and then I’ll draw a dick on your arm then you’ll get mad.”

The girl’s blunt way of speaking threw Percy off for a second. When he got over that, though, he couldn’t stop laughing. 

The laughter came freely, freer than it ever had. It was strange that this stranger could make him laugh more than anybody ever had in the last few years. He followed her to the back room and sat in the chair. When she rolled up his sleeves, her fingers feather light and nimble, her eyes widened at the tattoo on his forearm.

He flinched when her fingers grazed the trident. Percy’s eyes drifted up to meet her wondering hazel. At their semi-close proximity, Percy could say with full confidence her eyes were hazel. Light brown on the outside and muddy green in the middle. They were warm and soft and layered. Percy could get lost in them if he wanted to. He was getting lost in them  _ now _ .

“I’ve seen you before,” Rachel mused, getting out her supplies. “Were you fighting a chimera on 6th last week?”

A jolt of surprise went through him at her words. “Wait you can...you can see?”

“Well, actually-”

He cut her off with a glare and a reluctant grin. “As in, you can see the real world. The monsters and shit.”

Rachel smiled and crouched to clean a spot on his bicep. “I always have. Everybody thought I was crazy. My parents put me in a facility for a couple of weeks, then I learned how to shut up.”

Her words were upbeat with faux-cheeriness. Percy’s heart ached for her in that moment, even if he never knew it.

“If it’s any consolation you’re probably crazy for a different reason.”

She cracked a grin and shaved the area on his bicep, which barely had any hair anyway because Percy was on swim team. “That  _ is  _ a consolation, actually. I am perfectly at peace with being out of my mind.”

“Do you want an explanation?” Percy asked her, not flinching as she shaved the area. “Or would that disrupt your peace?”

“I would  _ love  _ an explanation.”

“The gods are real.”

Rachel tossed the razor in the trash and grinned at him. “Kind of freaky but cool.”

A laugh escaped Percy at her unblinking enthusiasm. “Here’s the crazy part: I’m the son of one.”

“A demigod?” She made an impressed sound as she moved to a thermal fax machine and picked up a stencil. It was a black horse, and Percy had to believe it was the worst case of coincidence he had ever beheld. The son of Poseidon trying to escape the godly world getting a tattoo of his father’s symbol.

He didn’t object, though.

“I’m the son of Poseidon.” He said, trying to chat the silence away. “He’s...the worst best dad ever.”

“I would assume so. Why do monsters try to kill you?”

He drummed his fingers along the arm of the tattoo chair as Rachel prepared her supplies. Maybe he shouldn’t tell her all that, considering she was only a stranger. Rachel was easy to talk to, though. The words seemed to appear in his mind, fully and perfectly structured, before they left his mouth.

Rachel tied her braids back and, catching him staring, winked slyly. The needle sat on a table beside his left arm. Anxiety bloomed at the sight of it.

“Need me to hold your hand?” She teased. 

Percy rolled his eyes. “No. Let’s just get this over with.” 

The first minute of lineart was the worst. Percy had been stabbed, cut, bruised, and left for dead, but the small buzz of pain on the muscle of his arm made him antsy. Rachel asked questions, and he tried to answer without getting distracted by the work of the needle.

“So how come I can see these monsters and other people can’t?” Rachel asked. Her tongue jutted out of the side of her mouth slightly as she worked. His right fingers tapped a rhythm as he processed the question.

“Um, some mortals can see the real world because they’re a legacy of some god. Some for no reason at all. Oh, you probably don’t know what a legacy is-”

“Stop moving.” She interrupted him then raised an eyebrow. “And I’m pretty sure I can use deductive reasoning and figure out what a legacy is.”

Rachel worked quickly and, soon, the linework was done. After coloring and shading it, she took a picture and showed off the design of the horse mid-run.

“You like it?” She asked eagerly. 

Percy’s eyes popped at the precise details on the tattoo, and the fact it would permanently take residence on his skin. “Yeah,” he said with a grin, holding a hot towel to his sore bicep. “My mom might lose her shit but...yeah, I love it.”

And, to his great surprise, he couldn’t find himself regretting the tattoo as he braved the cold, over one-hundred dollars poorer.

* * *

Sally had gasped at the sight of the black horse, as expected. Paul had quietly smiled at him and Estelle had screamed “Horsy!” 

“When did you get this?” His mother asked sternly. “And why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was kind of an impulsive decision,” Percy admitted. “At midnight.”

His mother abruptly left the room, muttering prayers and curses in Spanish. Percy waited patiently for his mom to come back, then tried for a smile.

“At least it can be partially hidden.”

She only responded with a stern look.

* * *

Percy’s next tattoo would be on his ankle.

One month later, Percy set foot in Effervescent Tattoos with a clear design outlined on a piece of paper with folds and wrinkles characteristic of his anxiety. According to his research (a quick Google search), the parlour’s night shift started at ten PM.

Rachel’s braids were pulled into a high ponytail this time, and her baggy overalls had spray painted designs and splashes of acrylic paint all over. She had a bit of blue spray paint of his her hands, and a splash of red on her face.

“You busy with something?” Percy asked her, looking her outfit up and down. “You know graffiti art is illegal, right?”

“That’s what makes it  _ fun _ ,” she teased. “I’m not even going to ask how you knew that.”

He showed her the design he’d drawn himself. He hoped the eraser marks wouldn’t affect her work. “You have spray paint all over you.”

“How do you know that isn’t my art style?”

“Is it?”

Rachel flashed him a cat-like grin. “Nope.”

The process of getting ready took less time than the last. Percy stood on a stool as Rachel drew the flower on his ankle. He had only gotten a tattoo once (not counting Camp Jupiter’s barbaric method of branding), he still hadn’t gotten used to the buzzing pain.

“Tell me more about this demigod thing,” Rachel finally said. “Like, what exactly do the gods do? If monsters are always trying to kill demigods, how come the gods don’t just...kill the monsters for you?”

“Beats me.” Percy snorted, and that familiar sot of bitterness went through his heart once again. “The gods are kind of the kings of deadbeat parents.”

Rachel paused for a moment, focusing on the tattoo, then stopped and put away the pen. She fixed her intense gaze on him. 

“You kneecap your sentences a lot.”

“What?”

“You like,” she blanked out for a second, blinked, then returned to what she was saying. “Sorry, you tend to... _ soften _ the impact of your words to make people more comfortable, I guess? You add ‘kind of’ and ‘a little bit’ to what you say. You shouldn’t.”

Percy’s mind went blank as he stared at her. He usually hated being analyzed, but Rachel’s words held no malice to them. His brain ran through a thousand ways she could manipulate him with that information, but none of them fit. If she was an empousa, she would have ripped him apart. If she was Pheme, goddess of gossip, in disguise to tattle on him to the gods, he would already be a smear mark on the floor.

Rachel, meanwhile, bit her lip nervously. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “That was...oh my gosh, that was really weird and I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m really sorry Percy, that was inappropriate.”

Percy blinked himself out of his stupor to wave her off. “No, no, it’s fine. You’re fine. People have said worse.”

People have  _ done  _ worse, but he didn’t add that.

Rachel crouched to take a picture of the new mark on his ankle, then showed it to him. 

“You never told me what kind of flower this is,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

Percy smiled with the memories of an island. “It’s called moonlace.”

“Any significance?”

Percy grinned at her, lopsided and sly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

* * *

When Percy lies awake at night, regretting his life and thinking of all the ways he’s traumatized, a new picture forms in his mind.

It’s a girl. A girl with hazel-green eyes and copper red braids and freckled brown skin, smiling at him through a paint-stained face. A girl with quick wit and a blunt manner of speaking.

He finds that this image doesn’t haunt him, not like the other faces. Not like the monsters and ghouls and voices and fallen friends hailed as heroes. She smiles, and laughs, and she doesn’t leave.

Strangely, he doesn’t want her to.

* * *

He came to the parlour often.

He didn’t know why he never went in. He just stood near the door and tried to imagine the lives of mortals. 

Rachel worked during the day sometimes. Percy saw her laugh with a girl wearing all-black, someone who only wore striped t shirts and jeans, and a boy around their age who gave her lingering, fond looks.

Percy didn’t know why, but that guy gave him a bad vibe.

The first time he visited Camp Half Blood that winter, Grover noticed his tattoos first.

“Percy!” He yelled from the ground. Percy was scaling the climbing wall with agility and speed earned from years of training. He quickly glanced over his shoulder then climbed to the top. 

“What!” He screamed back.

“Where’d you get the tattoo?!”

Percy didn’t know how he could have forgotten. Sweaty and shirtless, the black horse was on full display. His shoes might cover the moonlace on his ankle, but he couldn’t be sure.

Annabeth’s face snapped up to stare at him from beside Grover, her grey eyes widened. 

“Nowhere!” Percy decided to say. 

He crept down the climbing wall halfway before kicking off and flipping to the ground for the hell of it. Annabeth scrunched her nose at his sweaty form and eyed his bicep.

“How did Sally react?”

“Not too badly, more surprised than mad.”

“It’s good,” Annabeth muttered. “Actually flawless.”

“That’s the job of a tattoo artist, Annabeth.” Grover rolled his eyes, laughing at Annabeth glare. 

Percy couldn’t help the goofy grin at the memory of Rachel. Her work was definitely flawless, a big feat considering she had to work with Percy’s crappy design ideas.

Grover eyed him carefully. “Why are you smiling so much?”

“I’m not.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Annabeth nodded. “You are. We mentioned your tattoo and now you’re smiling.”

Percy rolled his eyes and wiped the grin from his expression. “Is this better?”

“Yes, actually.”

“ _ Shut up _ .”

* * *

The next tattoo was completely the fault of Estelle.

Percy walked into the Effervescent Tattoo Parlour at eleven PM with a clear design on a piece of paper.

“Another one?” Rachel asked, jumping down from the counter with a grin. “Maybe I shouldn’t question your decisions, though, because that just means more money for me.”

Percy rolled his eyes with a laugh. He got the distinct feeling to greet her as he would an friend; with a hug and a jovial shoulder bump. Instead, he stood back and held out the paper.

“Aaawww,” Rachel cooed, seeing the design. “Why this one?”

Percy’s cheeks grew hot as he scratched the back of his head. “My younger sister. My nickname for her is ‘Guppy’, so I thought I’d...get a tattoo of a guppy. Is that stupid? I feel like that’s stupid.”

Rachel’s eyes softened, and her lips quirked in a bright smile. Percy’s breath caught in his throat. 

“Of course it’s not,” she laughed. “I love it, but I’m not sure how much my opinion counts.”

Percy followed her into the back room, unable to tell her how much it actually meant.

* * *

“Have you ever met Apollo?”

Percy wished he could slap his hand over his mouth in that moment. Rachel looked at him strangely from her seat on the counter, an eyebrow arched perfectly and a McDonalds’ fry on the way to her mouth. 

“Percy, I don’t think you want me to answer that question.”

“Listen,” Percy spun a pen in between his fingers, animated with an idea. “Maybe you’re a legacy of something and that’s why you have clearsight. Are you adopted?”

“ _ Percy _ .”

“It’s a valid question!”

Rachel sighed dramatically and leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m not adopted. My parents wouldn’t treat their nonbiological child that shitty. But if you think I’m a legacy of Apollo, that might make sense because Yadriel says my golden hour selfies are the  _ best _ .”

Any god related questions Percy had dissipated at the name  _ Yadriel _ . 

“Um,” he tried to sound casual, but his throat was fighting to rise three octaves. “Who’s, um, who’s Yadriel? Special guy?”

Rachel’s head ducked down; shy, embarrassed, her lips tugging down a grin. “Nobody.”

“Oh,  _ come on _ , Dare.” Percy moved forward, plastering on his lopsided smile despite the sinking in his stomach. “Give me more credit than that. Do you like him?”

“Why do you sound like you want me to say no?” 

Percy blinked, taken aback. Rachel smirked up at him, even on the counter he was still a couple inches taller than her. 

“Cat got your tongue, Percy?” She teased, then popped another fry in her mouth. 

Rachel insinuated  _ weekly  _ that Percy was hung up on her, and he matched the energy by teasingly asking her out. But he couldn’t bite out a response, not when she was looking at him like...like  _ that. _ When she was staring at him through her lashes and her lips were twisted and pursed into a sardonic smirk and her eyes— her damn  _ eyes _ — were softening and glancing past his shoulder _and_ …

And maybe he should pay attention because Rachel was saying something important.

“Huh?” He found himself saying. Then he scratched the back of his neck and blinked away the strange fog that only came around with Rachel Elizabeth Dare and said it again. “Um, I’m sorry, I blanked out for a second. Could you repeat that?”

“Damn,” Rachel hopped off that counter and crossed the room to pick up a bulky looking bag that had spray painted colors staining it. “Do my words mean so little to you, Jackson?”

“No! No, I just—”

“I’m kidding.”

He blinked. She blinked. The tension melted away from his body and he found himself laughing a little bit. Rachel grinned and hefted the bag over her shoulder.

“Come on, loser,” she announced gleefully. “Someone hired me to do a mural on their building.”

* * *

Rachel’s art process was spontaneous and entertaining.

Percy couldn’t really focus on many things at once. He also couldn’t really focus on anything, really. But when Rachel picked up another can of spray paint and told him to stand in the center of the wall, he found himself transfixed with the way her face lit up and morphed and when her tongue stuck out a little bit when she concentrated.

“Did you know that you do this thing,” Percy began, trying his best to remain stock still. “Where when you concentrate, you stick your tongue out a little bit and your nose scrunches up and you smile randomly and...” He suddenly lost his breath, seeing her lips quirk up in the night air. “You have a  _ really  _ pretty smile.”

Rachel stepped back to examine her work. Percy was certain he would have sprays of electric blue and white and green in his hair, and he was certain he would not care. 

Her eyes met his, warm even in the cool of the night. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, so unlike her.

“I’ve never met anybody like you,” said Rachel. For a moment, Percy thought she would bring up the “demigod” thing, his mystery trident tattoo, that he casually calls the Olympian gods dicks in front of a mortal he’s barely known for five months. But she didn’t.

Rachel began to pace. “I’ve never met anybody who’s snarky and shy at the same time. I’ve never met anybody who I’ve  _ wanted  _ to talk to about my parents. I don’t think I’ve ever taken someone with me to like...tag a building.”

“I’m...honored?”

“You should be,” Rachel nodded once. “But I can’t figure you out, Percy. I have so many questions about you. Like, why do you kneecap your sentences even though you sound  _ much  _ more badass when you don’t?”

“Okay, listen—”

“Why do you stand outside the parlour and never come in during the day shift?”

“Wait, how do you—”

“And why do you smile at me sometimes like you’ve forgotten what you want to say and you’re fine with that?” She was standing closer to him now, close enough that she lifted her chin to meet his eyes, close enough that Percy could... _that he could_...

That he could dip his head down and kiss her if he wanted to. As if a string were pulling him to the girl in front of him, the girl who cares about every quirk and detail about him even though they barely knew each other. He found himself dragging his eyes over her shadowy facial features, all the way down to her lips then back to her eyes.

Maybe Percy could have denied whatever he was feeling if it wasn’t the middle of the night and if Rachel wasn’t standing so closely, and if he was blind and deaf and immune to the charms of Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

But he wasn’t any of those things, and it might have scared him a little bit, and that’s why he hesitated.

Rachel sighed and stepped back, taking his shoulder and turning him to admire her work. Her hand moved from his shoulder to intertwining with his hand, lighting paths of fire where her fingertips landed.

“That was the vibe I got from you,” she whispered. “I hope you like it.”

The mural was large, and the outline of his body was a stark black against the explosion of color around it. Electric blue tore out from the outline like lightning, streaking through and across the white background and various shapes like a stormy cloud and a rising tide, all the shapes surrounded his silhouette, joined by the blue streak was spiraling around a golden trident in the center on Percy’s dark silhouette. 

“You made this...for me?” He sounded flabbergasted, as if he’d never gotten a gift before.

“I made it about you,” Rachel admitted. “You’re kind of...a well of inspiration for an artist who’s been looking for some lately.”

And she smiled bright enough to light up the alley they were standing in. He found himself smiling too.


End file.
